Delta smelthttps://alumni.berkeley.edu/taxonomy/term/9847/all
enIs Brown's Massive Water Project the Right Idea Right Now?https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2017-06-29/browns-massive-water-project-right-idea-right-now
<div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Glen Martin</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>This week’s declaration by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service that the massive Delta tunnels proposed by the Jerry Brown administration would not cause the extinction of several imperiled fish species gave a significant boost to the behemoth project. Still, other impediments must be overcome before the digging starts and the concrete&nbsp;flows.</p>
<p>For one, the primary beneficiaries of the project—San Joaquin Valley corporate farms and Southern California urban water districts—will have to pony up most of the money for the scheme, and it’s not yet clear whether they’re willing to shoulder such a&nbsp;burden.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="caption" src="/sites/default/files/8028178642_f2dacd4af6_b.jpg" style="width: 350px; height: 250px; margin: 15px 5px; float: left;" title="Jerry Brown / Neon Tommy" />“The costs estimated by the State are $17 billion, but nobody really thinks it’s going to be just $17 billion,” says <a href="http://www.gleick.com/" target="_blank">Peter Gleick</a>, the president emeritus of the <a href="http://pacinst.org/" target="_blank">Pacific Institute</a> (a global water policy think tank), a MacArthur Foundation fellow and UC Berkeley alum (PhD and MS, Energy and Resources). “It’s likely to be a lot more. So it needs to be determined whether the water contractors are committed to not just that $17 billion, but all the cost overruns. And if they are, they’ll likely want guarantees on water deliveries and amounts, which could also be a sticking&nbsp;point.”</p>
<p>Further, says Gleick, a variety of permits are required before a shovelful of dirt can be turned, and<a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/29/environmentalists-fishing-groups-file-lawsuit-to-block-delta-tunnels-plan/" target="_blank"> lawsuits from environmentalists</a>, fisheries advocates, and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmers are certainly assured, threatening to throw the project back into limbo. So while tunnels supporters may be heartened by the agencies’ decisions, <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/delta/article158264619.html" target="_blank">statements</a> made by some water district officials that excavation could start by 2021 may prove excessively&nbsp;optimistic.</p>
<p>“This certainly can be viewed as a step that moves the project closer, at least to a degree,” says Gleick. “But really, it’s just a step in a very long process, a process that’s sure to extend beyond the Brown administration and the administration after that, and perhaps beyond my&nbsp;lifetime.”</p>
<p>The Delta Tunnels are a tweaked version of the peripheral canal, which Jerry Brown promoted during his first tenure as governor in the 1970s and 80s, and was rejected by voters in a referendum. The new conveyance would consist of two subterranean tunnels, each 35 miles long and four stories high, jointly capable of transporting 9,000 cubic feet of water a second, by any estimation a mighty flow, equivalent to a “big water” kayaking or rafting&nbsp;run.</p>
<p class="pullquote right">Brown insists the project is necessary to ensure reliable south state water deliveries and protection of imperiled fish such as the Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook&nbsp;salmon.</p>
<p>Brown insists the project is necessary to ensure reliable south state water deliveries and protection of imperiled fish such as the Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon, which often are captured and macerated in the gigantic state and federal pumps in the southern Delta near&nbsp;Tracy.</p>
<p><a href="https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/dennis-baldocchi" target="_blank">Dennis Baldocchi</a>, a professor at Cal’s <a href="https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank">Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management</a>, observes concerns over the Delta’s stability are justified. The Delta consists of a series of canals and sloughs interspersed with reclaimed “islands” that are essentially large holes in the ground ringed by shaky levees, he&nbsp;says.</p>
<p>“The Delta was a great place for agriculture in the late 19<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;century and early 20<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;century,” says Baldocchi. “Large tracts were drained and levees were put up, and everything was largely at sea&nbsp;level.”</p>
<p>But the Delta is situated on peat soils that rapidly oxidize when exposed to air, says Baldocchi, who grew up in the region and currently is conducting extensive wetlands restoration projects on Twitchell and Sherman Islands. As a result, the farmed tracts are continually sinking, and some are now more than 30 feet below sea level. Since 1980, <a href="http://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/sacramento-san-joaquin-delta-levees" target="_blank">27 islands</a> have been partially or wholly&nbsp;flooded.</p>
<p>“It’s at the point now where the soils are so subsided that water is constantly burbling under the levees as ‘boils,’ ” says Baldocchi. “A recent survey found that 11,000 acres of farmland in the Delta are subject to boils. And it’s only going to get worse. The hydrostatic pressure on the levees is a function of height squared, so the risk of catastrophic failure is increased as soils continually&nbsp;oxidize.”</p>
<p>If multiple levees fail in close conjunction, says Baldocchi—a risk compounded by earthquakes on the Hayward Fault or high water events in winter or spring—it likely would create a domino effect that would rapidly change the Delta from a mosaic of reclaimed farmland and waterways to a vast, brackish lake. And since the pumps at Tracy imbibe directly from the south Delta, they’d have to shut down, lest people in Los Angeles turn on their taps and fill their Mr. Coffees with&nbsp;saltwater.</p>
<p>The tunnels would obviate this threat at least partially because they would divert water directly from the Sacramento River north of the Delta to the pumps. Indeed, that’s the primary selling point for the tunnels: Absent a major infrastructure fix that will assure continued delivery of water to Southern California in the event of widespread levee collapse and saltwater intrusion in the Delta, say the project’s supporters, millions of California citizens are at risk of losing basic access to water. That would be a potential public health catastrophe, not an inconvenience. Moreover, billions in farm revenues would be lost, and it would likely be years before full water deliveries to the south state would be&nbsp;reestablished.</p>
<p>But while the tunnels should assure that megafarms and cities won’t have their deliveries disrupted by collapsing levees, they’ll likely do little to improve Delta ecosystems, or even sustain them in their current degraded state. Some habitat restoration projects that are part of the plan will hardly be adequate to bolster dwindling populations of native fish, say experts, and the project will facilitate the extraction of the one thing the Delta needs most: generous freshwater flows. The pipes will be big, observes Gleick, the temptation to use them to their full capacity will be strong, and water contractors ultimately will have a lot of say in how much water goes south. And at a certain point, diversions could impose a fatal calculus on the Delta, transforming it from a moribund system to a dead&nbsp;one.</p>
<p>“As things stand, you can see some potential [environmental] benefits to the project, but it all depends on how it’s operated,” Says Gleick. “Right now, there are no hard-and-fast rules on operation. That has a lot of people&nbsp;worried.”</p>
<p class="pullquote left">“The tunnels are a mid-20th century response to a 21st century problem, a $20 billion and 20-to-30 year distraction from the real solutions we need to&nbsp;pursue.”</p>
<p>Moe pointedly, say tunnels critics, the project is an antiquated, and likely ineffective, approach to California’s core water dilemma. Moving water several hundred miles from the north state to the south state will always remain fraught with engineering, environmental and fiscal problems, and it doesn’t address the basic fact that the supply is finite even as demand skyrockets. &nbsp;California needs to diversify its water options, says Gleick, and live within the inherent limits of the&nbsp;resource.</p>
<p>“The tunnels are a mid-20<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;century response to a 21<sup>st</sup>&nbsp;century problem, a $20 billion and 20-to-30 year distraction from the real solutions we need to pursue,” Gleick says. “We just came through a five-year drought, and some lessons were brought home. Water conservation and efficiency improvements work. Recycling and storm water capture are critical and effective tools. Agricultural reform is necessary. Every gallon of water that isn’t sent south of the Delta due to an efficiency is a gallon you can store in a reservoir, or return to the ecosystem. If the tunnels had been built ten years ago, they wouldn’t have changed what we did during the drought. The tunnels are a water delivery system. They don’t provide a single drop of new water. There <i>is</i> no new water. And the sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we can effectively manage our water for the 21<sup>st</sup>&nbsp;century.”</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Filed under: <a href="/california-magazine/topic/law-policy">Law + Policy</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/science-health">Science + Health</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Related topics: <a href="/california-magazine/topic/university-california">University of California</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/uc-berkeley">UC Berkeley</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/berkeley-alumni">Berkeley Alumni</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/cal">Cal</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/california-magazine">California magazine</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/glen-martin">Glen Martin</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/jerry-brown">Jerry Brown</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/brown-administration">Brown administration</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/california">California</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/drought">drought</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/peter-gleick">Peter Gleick</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/pacific-institute">Pacific Institute</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/macarthur-foundation">MacArthur Foundation</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/sacramento-san-joaquin-delta">Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/wetland-restoration">wetland restoration</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/environmental-science-policy-and-management">Environmental Science Policy and Management</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/chinook-salmon">Chinook salmon</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/delta-smelt">Delta smelt</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/endangered-fish">endangered fish</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/farmers">farmers</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/agriculture">agriculture</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/dennis-baldocchi">Dennis Baldocchi</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/referendum">referendum</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/urban-water-districts">urban water districts</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/california-magazine/topic/southern-california">Southern California</a></div></div></div>Thu, 29 Jun 2017 23:31:58 +0000Sara.Beladi7635 at https://alumni.berkeley.edu